Lord Ashcroft Pollshttps://lordashcroftpolls.com
Wed, 15 Apr 2020 08:18:25 +0000en-US
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1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.2.3Trump stands a better chance of re-election in November than you may thinkhttps://lordashcroftpolls.com/2020/04/trump-stands-a-better-chance-of-re-election-in-november-than-you-may-think/
Wed, 15 Apr 2020 08:18:25 +0000https://lordashcroftpolls.com/?p=16464The Coronavirus has changed the world, at least for the time being. But how much has it changed politics? It would take a brave soul to make any kind of projection about the long-term effects of the times we are living through. But my latest polling in the US, collected in my new report The Home Stretch: Campaigning In The Age Of Coronavirus, suggests that the biggest political effect of the current crisis might not be to change people’s minds, but to make them feel more strongly about what they think already.

In the red corner, we have Donald Trump’s 2016 voters. They have remained loyal throughout his presidency, and I found nine in ten of them approving his performance to date, most of them doing so strongly. Almost as many say he has been at least as good a president as they anticipated, with more than half of them saying he had surpassed their expectations.

They rate him highly on all policy areas, especially the economy, national security, immigration and (despite the impression you might get from Twitter) America’s standing in the world. They overwhelmingly saw his impeachment as part of a political campaign against him, rather than a serious judicial process in which he had a case to answer. Asked in my poll to choose from a wide range of positive and negative descriptions, their most frequent selections were “strong,” “up to the job,” “determined,” “effective” and, most popular of all, “leader.”

Nor had their faith been seriously shaken by recent events. Several of his voters in our focus groups in Michigan and Florida (conducted online, so as not to put anyone at risk) admitted that his handling of the crisis left a lot to be desired. This was particularly true of his sometimes rambling performance at daily press briefings at which, after serious points from scientists and doctors he would “go off on a tangent about how rich he is and how he doesn’t need a paycheck. It’s not what we really need to hear right now.”

But these supporters also argued that even if the crisis did not exactly show Trump in his best light, he was still the man for the job. He might be self-indulgent and undiplomatic, they say, or even “missing the compassion gene” altogether, but we knew that before we voted for him. The crisis had not been of his making, and what mattered was getting the country back on its feet once the emergency was over: “Who do you want there to rebuild the country? To me, that’s going to be his greatest opportunity to shine.”

Meanwhile in the purple corner, if you will, we have Trump’s less fervent 2016 voters, including those who had previously supported Barack Obama or had backed Trump mainly to stop Hillary Clinton. Though still largely positive, they gave lower approval ratings than Trump voters as a whole, and less generous marks on all policy issues.

It was also clear in our focus group discussions that many had begun to tire of the Donald Trump show. Though they had seen his antics as a price worth paying for the change they expected him to bring about, they were harder to take in the absence, as they saw it, of any real improvement in their own circumstances. “Calling people names and throwing out insults gets old after a while,” as one told us, “especially if the economy is not good.” Though he was supposed to have drained the Washington swamp and surrounded himself with experts, “everyone except his daughter has quit or got fired. It’s always their fault, never on him.”

For these people, Trump’s handling of the Coronavirus was part of this pattern. “We had two and a half months to prepare,” complained one. “Instead we were told it was a hoax and no-one took it seriously, and now we have no supplies.” Even now there seemed to be an absence of leadership: “Every day they hand the mic to a different person. You don’t know who’s in charge, who is the adult in the room.” Talk of the “Chinese virus” hardly helped: “It’s Trump being Trump but it’s unnecessary. His mouth gets him in trouble too often and this is one of those moments.”

In the blue corner, to stretch the metaphor beyond endurance, are the voters who never liked Trump in the first place, and who are predictably scathing about his performance in recent weeks. Rationally, they think the crisis should finally expose Trump as the terrible president they believe him to be: “His initial response was so laissez-faire, it’s coming back and biting him in the ass,” as one neatly summarized. “Seeing how he’s handling this, it would be crazy to re-elect him.”

But in their hearts, many are not so sure it will turn out this way. This is partly because they think people may be less inclined to remove a leader during such a time, but also because they themselves are struggling to summon the enthusiasm to get behind Joe Biden, effectively the Democrats’ nominee-designate since Bernie Sanders suspended his campaign last week.

A number of Michigan primary voters told us he had been only their third choice after younger and more exciting candidates dropped out and the party establishment re-asserted itself, as it had done for Clinton four years earlier. Though he did not inspire anything like the animosity of his predecessor, he felt every bit as much of a compromise – albeit one they were prepared to make. This was especially true for African-American voters we spoke to, who could not bring themselves to vote for Clinton but were resolved to do what it took to deny Trump a second term.

Despite this, few seemed hopeful that it would be their year. Implicit in their reasoning was that if they could not get excited about their candidate, they could hardly expect anyone else to. The poll suggested further grounds for such pessimism – the word most often chosen to describe him in our poll was “elderly,” with several undecided voters in our groups describing him as “not all there.”

Among those who had voted for Sanders in the primary, only seven in ten said they currently intended to turn out and vote for Biden in November. The incongruity was also evident at a national level – though Biden beat Trump comfortably in our poll, when we asked people who they thought would win, Trump came out on top.

Though the election is less than seven months away, in terms of events it remains distant and much could change. The numbers affected by Coronavirus will grow and the economic damage will mount. We can’t tell whether, by November, the emergency will have receded, with the accent on recovery and rebuilding, or if Coronavirus will still be the preeminent fact of the day. In political terms, there is still time for the crisis to turn the tables. But it hasn’t yet.

]]>Counting on Trump’s performance to see him kicked out? I wouldn’t bet on it…https://lordashcroftpolls.com/2020/04/counting-on-trumps-performance-to-see-him-kicked-out-i-wouldnt-bet-on-it/
Sat, 11 Apr 2020 23:01:30 +0000https://lordashcroftpolls.com/?p=16450This article was first published in the Mail on Sunday

As a woman in Michigan put it during my latest round of polling in America: “It’s almost painful to watch. I have to change the channel.” But her comment did not refer to the scenes played out in hospitals and elsewhere as the coronavirus wreaks havoc across the US. Instead, she was talking about Donald Trump’s performance alongside doctors and scientists in daily press conferences that have transfixed the nation. “He’s missing the compassion gene,” said another. “He goes off on a tangent about how rich he is and how he doesn’t need a paycheck. It’s not what people need to hear right now.”

Both remarks were from people who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 but were now having second thoughts. Like many others, they were horrified that the country had seemed so unprepared, with such vital things as ventilators, testing kits and protective equipment for health workers in short supply. People felt the response had been too slow, not least because the President had initially downplayed the seriousness of the situation and had failed to underline its dangers. They lamented a lack of leadership at the national level: “You don’t know who’s in charge, who is the adult in the room,” as one confused observer put it. The President’s references to the “Chinese virus” were considered very unhelpful even by those who thought they contained an element of truth.

These reactions chime with a widespread view that the crisis spells disaster for Trump’s chances of being re-elected in November. Strikingly, though, I found that those most critical of the President – aside from those who had never liked him in the first place – were those who were already disillusioned with him before the current crisis hit, feeling the change they were promised had not materialised for them. To these people, his flaws had long ago begun to grate. “Calling people names and throwing out insults gets old after a time,” one woman told us, “especially if the economy is not good.” His response to the coronavirus had simply encapsulated why it was that they were disappointed with him. They hoped he would surround himself with experts and drain the swamp of Washington politics; instead he seemed to be ignoring or undermining the very people whose advice ought to be holding sway.

But that is not the whole story. Though economic optimism is down, overall approval for Trump’s job performance is rising. This is often seen in times of crisis, as Americans rally to the flag. It can also prove fleeting, as President George H. W. Bush found to his cost at the 1992 election, having enjoyed stratospheric ratings a year earlier during the first Gulf War.

Yet there are other straws in the wind. While voters agree that the Covid-19 emergency may not exactly show the President in his best light, for many it simply highlights traits they had long ago decided to overlook. Yes, they say, we know he’s self-indulgent and undiplomatic, and the crisis has offered some prime examples of that. But sooner or later, America is going to have to get back to business, and who better to make that happen Donald Trump. “Who do you want to be there to rebuild the country?” as a man in Tampa put it to us. “To me, that’s going to be his greatest opportunity to shine.” Besides, he added, in what was either heroic determination to look on the bright side or a piece of spin to make Alastair Campbell blush, “He does have experience with bankruptcy. He knows how to get himself out of a hole.”

More to the point, the November election will not simply be a referendum on the Trump presidency, let alone his handling of the coronavirus disaster. It will be a choice between two individuals, the other of whom is some way from setting the nation alight. Joe Biden, now certain to be the Democratic nominee after the withdrawal of Bernie Sanders this week, is considered inoffensive (a big advantage over his predecessor, Hillary Clinton), but any sense that he is the man for the moment is noticeably absent. In my poll, the word Americans most often chose to describe him was “elderly.” More than one former Trump voter who was in the market for an alternative said that Biden seemed to be “not all there.”

Democrats themselves struggle to summon any enthusiasm for him. Many of his primary voters told us he was their second or even third choice after younger and more exciting candidates withdrew, and that they feared the idealistic socialist Sanders could not appeal to potential swing voters. Biden was simply the embodiment of the compromise they knew was necessary to give themselves the best chance of denying Donald Trump a second term.

It was a compromise they were prepared to make, yet the mood among the Democrats we spoke to was gloomy. Although they knew Trump was behind in the polls and saw what they considered his worst features magnified each day as the crisis wore on, something told them that this, like 2016, was not going to be their year. Our poll put that feeling into numbers: when we asked people how they would vote, Biden beat Trump by 12 points. When we asked who they thought would win, the answer was Trump.

Though its actual consequences are all too real, the political effect of coronavirus – as with all the flashpoints of Donald Trump’s presidency – might not be to change people’s minds instead but to reinforce what they thought already. In that case, the outcome in November is no more certain now than it was when Covid-19 was just a minor item in the pages of the overseas news.

]]>An open letter to Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the new International Development Secretaryhttps://lordashcroftpolls.com/2020/02/an-open-letter-to-anne-marie-trevelyan-the-new-international-development-secretary/
Mon, 24 Feb 2020 16:16:22 +0000https://lordashcroftpolls.com/?p=16447Dear Anne-Marie

Congratulations on your elevation to the Cabinet. I was delighted to see your appointment to the post of international development secretary given your unstinting efforts to stand up for British interests as an energetic Brexiteer. I must confess to slight bias, however, given that you retweeted an article of mine from 2013 calling for an end to ring fencing of the foreign aid budget. This gives me renewed hope that we might finally see reform of this money pit.

It was kind of you to say my article was ‘interesting’ on ‘the value (or otherwise) of the overseas aid budget.’ As I argued, it defies all logic to commit Britain to an arbitrary spending target that means we must dole out 0.7 per cent of national income. ‘In what other areas of government do we start not by asking what we want to achieve, but how much of our national income we want to dispense?’ I asked. That was true then and it is even truer today.

Despite the imposition of austerity to restore public finances after Labour’s time in office, David Cameron’s coalition government hiked spending on foreign aid. In 2013, the year I wrote that article you praised, the budget rose by almost one-third to £11.4bn despite falling numbers of police and substantial cuts to local authority budgets at home. It was also the year that Britain – unlike most wealthy competitors such as the United States, France, China or Japan – joined a tiny club of countries hitting that highly questionable United Nations target.

Since then, aid spending has risen to £14.6bn last year, and the arbitrary target has been enshrined into law by Westminster. This budget doubled in a decade under three Tory prime ministers, ensuring Britain spends more than any other country except for the United States. Priti Patel, one of your many predecessors, wrote at one point that waste of cash on ‘vanity projects in far-flung lands’ and ‘bonkers’ procurement kept her awake at night – which you shared also on social media.

The tragedy of Britain’s approach to aid is that it not only betrays the interests of British taxpayers but fails the world’s most vulnerable people. Why are we giving aid to China, a country with a bigger economy than our own? Why do we spend millions in India, which not only has an ambitious space programme but its own aid agency? Why do we pump money into a place such as Rwanda when it then spends tens of millions of pounds sponsoring Arsenal, its autocratic president’s favourite Premier League football team? Why do we aid officials from North Korea, the world’s most awful state? Meanwhile even the World Bank has had to admit that its substantial handouts seem to fuel corruption, especially in more aid-dependent economies with their weak political structures.

You are the fourth person to hold this seat around the cabinet table within a single year. This indicates that foreign aid is not really seen as the most pressing concern for our party. But I have seen sensible aid sceptics accept this post before, only to soon start chirping the chorus conducted by the DfID mandarins. However, the combination of Brexit and a parliamentary majority of 80 under Boris Johnson presents the opportunity to be bold in reassessing our priorities, both domestic and international. The PM has shown he is aware of the problems, observing last year that ‘we can’t keep spending huge sums of British taxpayers’ money as though we were some independent Scandinavian NGO’

There are other signs of progress. I was pleased to see the reshuffle involved the appointment of a joint ministerial team for your new department and the foreign office. There have been hints and whispers this paves the way for a full merger. Fingers crossed these rumours turn out to be true. DfID officials with big budgets and an often-distasteful reluctance to stand up for democratic values have become far more powerful than our diplomats in some developing nations, while the department stands aloof from the rest of Whitehall. It is time to bring development under the control of the Foreign Secretary, as part of an overall vision of the UK’s interests and priorities. This would surely not include assisting cruel regimes, spending money in wasteful style and pursuing policies that are anachronistic and damaging.

So I wish you well in your new job, but I must be honest and say I hope your tenure doesn’t last too long. Just long enough to oversee the absorption of the DfID back into the Foreign Office at which point we can ditch the crazy target and focus on the real needs of poor and vulnerable people. This would be a significant political achievement – and one sure to bring you the reward of another job that involves thinking about what we want to achieve, not just how much we want to spend.

Yours sincerely,

Michael

]]>If Trump’s opponents don’t learn from Corbyn’s catastrophe, The Donald’s guaranteed four more yearshttps://lordashcroftpolls.com/2020/02/if-trumps-opponents-dont-learn-from-corbyns-catastrophe-the-donalds-guaranteed-four-more-years/
Sun, 16 Feb 2020 06:00:20 +0000https://lordashcroftpolls.com/?p=16442This article first appeared in the Mail on Sunday

“They take our votes for granted and think we were born yesterday.” So said a former Labour voter last month in the North East of England, reflecting on what had become of the party he once regarded as his own. While Labour had once been for “normal working people, who pay for their house, pay for their car,” it was now mostly for “young people and students, and the unemployed” – that or “middle-class radicals,” and “people in London who go on marches to get rid of Brexit.”

Such views, which emerged in the research for Diagnosis of Defeat, my new report on where Labour stands with the voters following its worst defeat since 1935, tell us even more about the party’s predicament than the election result itself. While senior Labour figures and the party’s own official inquiry claim the outcome was all about Brexit, the truth is that their problems go much deeper. While many did vote to get Brexit done, more serious still was the principle that when it came to the referendum result – but not just that – Labour no longer listened to them. The party had become too left-wing, could not be trusted with the money, and seemed to have adopted values far removed from their own sensible, practical outlook on life. Many described Labour’s manifesto, with its wild spending promises and expensive irrelevancies like free broadband, as “pie in the sky.”

It is Labour members, now pondering the choice of leadership candidates, who will decide which direction to take their party. Meanwhile, in America, a similar drama is being played out. Labour’s recent history should serve as a cautionary tale for their allies in the US Democratic Party as they shape up for their battle with Donald Trump in November’s presidential election. The parallels are not exact, but close enough for the Democrats to beware of enacting a transatlantic sequel to the Corbyn story.

First and most obvious is the choice of candidate. Following his victory in this week’s New Hampshire primary, the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination is Bernie Sanders, a septuagenarian socialist who has often been compared to his North London comrade. Both spent long careers in politics fighting for unfashionably left-wing causes and, as many saw it, siding with their respective countries’ opponents in matters of foreign policy, before bursting to prominence and winning a devoted following among like-minded (but usually much younger) admirers. Moderates, meanwhile, are reluctant to put people of their ideological ilk at the head of government – and, in the case of 78-year-old Sanders, wonder if he is personally up to the rigours of office.

Second is the question of competence. One of the many complaints about Labour was that they were simply not ready for government, as attested by multiple gaffes from bungling spokespeople, hopeless division, and a policy on the central issue of the day (renegotiate Brexit and hold a second referendum in which they may or may not campaign against the new deal they had just secured) which voters found scarcely credible. The fiasco of last week’s Iowa caucus – with results delayed after an app used to tabulate the votes malfunctioned – may be of a completely different kind, but the effect is the same: if the Democrats can’t run their own candidate selection process properly, voters may ask, how can they run the country? As the President himself tweeted, “The only person that can claim a very big victory in Iowa last night is ‘Trump’.”

Third is the matter of priorities. In Britain, many Leave voters – along with many remainers who wanted to get it done and move on – were exasperated that their Labour MPs voted against Brexit at every turn. They seemed more absorbed with parliamentary games and partisan advantage than acting on their constituents’ wishes. Here the American analogue is the Democrats’ failed impeachment of the President. Even many reluctant Trump voters saw this as part of a “witch hunt” waged against him from day one, just as they did the Mueller investigation, which his opponents hoped would prove that his campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 election. For three years, Democrats in Washington have often seemed intent on bringing down the man, rather than working on anything that would improve the lives of Americans.

This is closely connected to the question of values. Former Labour voters often told us that their erstwhile party had embraced a politically correct or “woke” culture and seemed to disapprove of people who didn’t share it, or its liberal positions on things like immigration. Here there is a striking comparison with Hillary Clinton’s 2016 description of Trump voters as a “basket of deplorables” which, not at all surprisingly, the voters in question still remember. And as with Trump, so with Brexit: the opponents of both failed to understand why a reasonable person would vote for either, and gave the impression of believing those who had done so to be backward or bigoted.

Finally, there are the promises. Voters in Britain did not believe Labour’s manifesto pledges would ever come to pass – or that if they did, the cost would be much more debt and much higher taxes. Similarly, Americans know that policies like free college and free universal healthcare are not free at all, and they will be the ones to pay. Cautious, moderate voters will not easily be persuaded to vote for a big tax hike, even if it means tolerating four more years of Trumpian antics.

The Democrats can avoid such a fate. They have still to choose their candidate and define their policy programme, and they may yet convince enough Americans that they are on their side and have their interests at heart. But if they choose the same path as Labour and suffer the same fate, they can’t say they didn’t see it coming.

]]>Labour are in a pickle, but the Tories must keep their heads down: lessons from my new polling reporthttps://lordashcroftpolls.com/2020/02/labour-are-in-a-pickle-but-the-tories-must-keep-their-heads-down-lessons-from-my-new-polling-report/
Wed, 12 Feb 2020 09:52:46 +0000https://lordashcroftpolls.com/?p=16435Many Conservatives reading Diagnosis of Defeat, my polling report on the Labour Party’s predicament, will probably have felt a flicker of schadenfreude. It is certainly true that Labour have very deep-rooted problems that go well beyond Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn, the proximate causes of their disastrous defeat. The belief among former Labour supporters that the party had ceased to represent them while taking their votes for granted had been growing for many years, as they explained in devastating detail in my post-election focus groups.

Worse still, the voters who deserted Labour see the party’s problems in a completely different light from that of many of the members who will decide its future. While Labour “defectors” said they did not want Corbyn to be Prime Minister, distrusted Labour’s policies and felt the party did not listen to them – not least because it had tried to stand in the way of Brexit – members were more likely to blame the media, Conservative lies, and the voters, as well as Brexit for dominating an election in which they felt they would otherwise have been on stronger ground. Three quarters of them think Labour did not deserve to lose, and nearly six in ten think their party’s values are closer to those of the British public as a whole than the Tories’ – a view shared by just one in twenty Labour-Conservative switchers. Uniquely, they consider Corbyn the best Labour leader of recent times, and two thirds of them think the party had the right policies and only need a strong leader and a good campaign to be in a strong position at the next election – which only 15% of Labour members expect to result in another Tory victory.

Several Labour MPs have urged serious study of the research, knowing real change is needed if the party is to recover. But other senior figures are eager to take the party down a different branch of what must surely be the wrong direction. Andrew Murray, a Corbyn adviser and leader of the powerful Unite union, writes in Tribune that Labour should not get caught up in the “arid binary” of whether the result was down to Brexit or Corbyn, and he is right about that. While he’s also correct that Labour’s “cloudy” Brexit policy and parliamentary obstructionism were damaging, I am not so sure about his claim that the party’s “transformative message about a different kind of society” failed to impress the voters simply because of “the communications failure of the election campaign.” Though Murray correctly notes that Labour’s long decline predates both Brexit and the Corbyn leadership, his remedy – a revival of class struggle and mass action – seems a million miles from the lives and priorities of the actual people we spoke to over the last month for my report.

Ultimately, the Labour Party will have to decide for itself whether it wants to get back in touch with those people or scurry back down the rabbit hole of socialist theory. Conservatives, meanwhile, should ignore Labour’s travails completely and act as though they are already faced with the kind of Opposition that is ready to supplant them at any moment. In fact, there are a number of points in my report that should concentrate Tory minds.

Nearly a quarter of Labour defectors, including 17% of Labour-Conservative switchers, still identify with Labour or think of Labour as “their” party. Voters as a whole are as likely as not (and Labour defectors are more likely than not) to say they would trust Labour more than the Conservatives with Britain’s public services. Though only a minority say they think the Labour Party “wants to help ordinary people get on in life,” “stands for fairness,” or that it’s “heart is in the right place,” voters as a whole are still more likely to say they are true of Labour than the Tories. One in five Labour defectors, and 14% of Labour-Conservative switchers, say “2019 was an unusual election and the reasons I didn’t vote Labour were very specific – I will probably vote Labour again next time.” Only 17% of Labour defectors, and only a quarter of Labour-Conservative switchers, say they cannot see themselves voting Labour again in the future.

Listening to the former Labour voters in our focus groups, all of which took place in what would once have been thought the party’s heartland, one of the most striking things was the sense that they felt liberated from the tribe, and empowered by the experience of changing their vote and seeing the result. They have high hopes for Boris Johnson and the Tories, but their support is strictly conditional on delivery. Delivery of what? This is part of the problem. Another striking finding from my research was the idea that rather than a fourth Tory term, this was a new beginning, a completely new government. As one put it, Boris represents “a lot of hope and a fresh start” – an invigorating accolade, but also perhaps a worrying one for a PM who finds expectations not only high but perilously unspecific.

The trust Labour squandered over Brexit will not return simply because the legislation taking us out of the EU is complete. But by the same token, nor will previously frustrated leave voters stick with the Tories simply out of gratitude for getting Brexit done. “What have you done for me lately?” will be the question in four or five years’ time. Labour are in a pickle, but the Tories must keep their heads down.

]]>Diagnosis of Defeat: Labour’s Turn to Smell the Coffeehttps://lordashcroftpolls.com/2020/02/diagnosis-of-defeat-labours-turn-to-smell-the-coffee/
Mon, 10 Feb 2020 22:00:53 +0000https://lordashcroftpolls.com/?p=16420After the Conservatives lost their third consecutive election in 2005, I published Smell the Coffee: A Wake-Up Call for the Conservative Party. I felt that the Tories had failed to grasp the reasons for their unpopularity and needed a serious reality check if they were ever to find their way back into government. With Labour now having been rejected by the voters four times in a row, I thought it was time to do the same for them.

No doubt some will be suspicious of my motives. I’m a Tory, after all – indeed, a former Deputy Chairman of the party. There are two answers to that. The first is that the country needs a strong opposition. Britain will be better governed if those doing the governing are kept on their toes. Moreover, at its best, the Labour Party has been a great force for decency, speaking up for people throughout the country and ensuring nobody is forgotten. We need it to reclaim that role.

The second answer is that you don’t have to trust me – just listen to what real voters have to say in the research that follows. Last month I polled over 10,000 people, paying particular attention to those who voted Labour in 2017 but not in 2019. We have also conducted 18 focus groups in seats Labour lost, with people who have moved away from the party (often feeling that the party had moved away from them). The report includes extensive quotes from these discussions, since they explain Labour’s predicament better than any analyst could. They are all the more powerful when you consider they come from people who were voting Labour until very recently and probably never expected to do otherwise.

We also polled over 1,000 Labour Party members, and conducted focus groups with members of the party and of Labour-supporting trade unions, to see how the Labour movement’s understanding of the election differs from that of the electorate at large and whether – and how far – they think the party needs to change.

From election night on, senior Labour figures have argued that the result was all about Brexit – with the implication that their lost voters will be back in force once that issue is off the agenda. While there is no doubt that Brexit played a huge part in the election, Labour would be wrong to draw too much comfort from that. Yes, many voted to “get Brexit done.” But they also thought Labour’s policy of renegotiation and neutrality was simply not credible: it stemmed from hopeless division and proved the party was nowhere near ready for government.

More serious still for these voters was the principle that Labour had refused to implement the democratically expressed wishes of the people, and often of their own constituents. Brexit therefore became a metaphor for a party that no longer listened to them, taking their votes for granted while dismissing their views as ignorant or backward. “They were saying, ‘it’s the adults talking now, leave the table and we’ll sort it out for you’,” as one former supporter put it. Another linked Labour’s apparent attitude on Brexit to Gordon Brown’s encounter with Gillian Duffy in 2010: “He tarred her with the bigot brush rather than listening to what she had to say. It’s the same with Brexit.” These impressions – of a party unready for office and unwilling to listen – will not vanish just because the Brexit legislation is complete.

It was reported that Labour’s official inquiry “exonerated” Jeremy Corbyn from any blame for the election result. I can only assume this was a compassionate gesture for an already-outgoing septuagenarian leader, because no serious reading of the evidence could reach such a verdict. “I did not want Jeremy Corbyn to be Prime Minister” topped the list for Labour defectors when we asked their reasons for switching, whether they went to the Tories or the Lib Dems, to another party, or stayed at home. Though a few saw good intentions, former Labour voters in our groups lamented what they saw as his weakness, indecision, lack of patriotism, apparent terrorist sympathies, failure to deal with antisemitism, outdated and excessively left-wing worldview, and obvious unsuitability to lead the country.

But the feeling that the Labour Party was no longer for them went beyond Brexit and the Corbyn leadership. While it had once been true that “they knew us, because they were part of us,” Labour today seemed to be mostly for students, the unemployed, and middle-class radicals. It seemed not to understand ordinary working people, to disdain what they considered mainstream views and to disapprove of success. The “pie in the sky” manifesto of 2019 completed the picture of a party that had separated itself from the reality of their lives.

As far as many of these former supporters were concerned, then, the Labour Party they rejected could not be trusted with the public finances, looked down on people who disagreed with it, was too left-wing, failed to understand or even listen to the people it was supposed to represent, was incompetent, appallingly divided, had no coherent priorities, did not understand aspiration or where prosperity comes from, disapproved of their values and treated them like fools.

Despite all this, the defectors we spoke to do not rule out returning to Labour. Indeed, many now clearly relish their new status as floating voters, ready to hold governments to account and take each election as it comes. But they won’t do so until Labour changes, and most expect the necessary transformation to take years. While many Labour members grasp the need to change in principle, it is clear that they would find some of the shifts voters say they want to see – such as a less liberal stance on immigration, or much stricter fiscal discipline – harder to stomach in practice.

This report is not a road map to recovery: different people can draw sharply different conclusions from the same data, and I’m sure that will be the case with this research. But the first step is to come to terms with your starting point. What follows is a pitiless but objective assessment of where that is.

]]>Was it really ‘Brexit wot lost it’ for Labour?https://lordashcroftpolls.com/2019/12/was-it-really-brexit-wot-lost-it-for-labour/
Tue, 17 Dec 2019 13:26:49 +0000https://lordashcroftpolls.com/?p=16412John McDonnell was first with the theory, as soon as the exit poll had stunned the nation. “Brexit dominated the election,” he said. “I think people are frustrated and want Brexit out of the way.” The theme was taken up over the hours and days that followed, culminating in the claim Labour “won the argument” and that Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership had nothing to do with the party’s worst result since 1935. Brexit alone was to blame.

Well, if this is the result you get when you win the argument, we can only imagine what losing it would look like. But what about the idea that the result can be put entirely down to Brexit, rather than the broader questions of policy and leadership that usually go into people’s voting decisions?

It would be absurd to deny that Brexit played a big part in the result. My election-day post-vote poll of 13,000 voters found the idea that a Conservative vote was most likely to lead to “the Brexit outcome I wanted” topped the list of broad explanations for Tory voters’ decisions – but only 37% mentioned it as the single most important reason, and a third of them didn’t mention it in their top three. The view that the Conservatives “would do a better job of running the economy” was close behind, as was their view that Boris Johnson would make a better Prime Minister.

But even though Brexit policy was a clear dividing line between the parties, this cannot be disentangled from Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership on the issue, or lack of it. Since the referendum, voters have found Labour’s policy muddled and unclear. Time and again, people told us in focus groups that they suspected Corbyn really wanted to leave the EU but wouldn’t say so. They understood that he was caught between his mostly Remain MPs and activists and his many Leave voters, but that didn’t make him seem any stronger or more decisive. When telling us what they understood Labour’s policy to be – usually in terms like “they will negotiate a new deal and then have another referendum and campaign against it,” if they knew it at all – they would often do so with a smirk which betrayed what they thought of it. Corbyn’s ultimate declaration that as Prime Minister he would be “neutral” on the biggest political question facing the country simply invited derision.

It is true that only 64% of 2017 Labour Leave voters stayed with the party last week (just as 66% of 2017 Conservative Remainers stayed loyal to the Tories). Certainly, Brexit was important to these people, and as we found week after week in our focus groups, many were torn over whether they could bring themselves to vote Conservative. But Corbyn made their decision to do so easier, not harder. Regularly we heard that he was an ultra-left-wing backward-looking 1970s throwback with terrorist sympathies and no fondness for Britain, who had at the very least failed to deal with antisemitism in his own party and simply did not have the qualities to be Prime Minister. Many former supporters told us they could not vote Labour in its current form, Brexit or no Brexit. Indeed, in our post-vote poll, only 14% of Conservative voters said they would have voted differently had Brexit not been on the agenda, and only a quarter of themsaid they would otherwise have voted Labour.

But even though Brexit helped some Labour Leavers away from the party, how to explain the defections among its 2017 supporters who voted Remain? Sixteen per cent of 2017 Labour Remainers declined to vote for the party last week – twice the proportion of Conservative Leavers who failed to vote Tory – despite the adoption of a policy on the supposedly overriding issue of the election which was designed to keep them on board.

Perhaps the starkest evidence of all on this question came midway through the campaign, when I asked voters what, if anything, they feared about a new Conservative or Labour government. In third place for Labour, “their plans might damage business and the economy.” Second, “they would spend too much and get Britain into more debt.” And top of the list? “Jeremy Corbyn being Prime Minister.”

We should understand why many in the Labour Party want to hold fast to the idea that Brexit alone cost them the election. After a traumatic setback, it is only human to grasp at the most comforting explanations that come to hand. It is also a regular habit of losing political parties, as we saw with Labour in 2010 and, let us not forget, with the Conservatives after 1997, who took years, not days, to grasp the reasons for their predicament. But the longer Labour clings to its consolation theory, the more distant will be the first step on the road to recovery.

]]>How Britain voted and why: My 2019 general election post-vote pollhttps://lordashcroftpolls.com/2019/12/how-britain-voted-and-why-my-2019-general-election-post-vote-poll/
Fri, 13 Dec 2019 13:23:04 +0000https://lordashcroftpolls.com/?p=16379I surveyed over 13,000 people on election day who had already cast their vote, to help understand how this extraordinary result came about. The results show who voted for whom, and why.

The demographics

Labour won more than half the vote among those turning out aged 18-24 (57%) and 25-34 (55%), with the Conservatives second in both groups. The Conservatives were ahead among those aged 45-54 (with 43%), 55-64 (with 49%) and 65+ (with 62%).

Men chose the Conservatives over Labour by a 19-point margin (48% to 29%), while women did so by just 6 points (42% to 36%). The Conservatives won among all socio-economic groups by margins of between 6 points (DEs) and 20 points (C2s).

When did you decide?

More than half of voters said they made up their minds within the last month, with a quarter saying they did so within the last few days, including 16% saying they decided on election day or the day they filled in their postal ballot. Labour support was higher among those making up their minds within the last week of the campaign.

How easy was the decision?

39% of all voters said they found their decision harder than usual. Labour (42%) and Lib Dem (56%) voters were more likely to say they found the decision harder than usual than those who voted Conservative (32%). Those who voted Conservative and SNP were the most likely to say they found the decision easier than usual, with 27% of voters for both parties saying they found it much easier than usual.

44% of Remain voters said they found their decision harder than usual, compared to 35% of Leave voters.

Tactical voting

Just over a quarter (26%) of all voters said they were trying to stop the party they liked least from winning, including 43% of those who voted Lib Dem and 31% of Labour voters. One in three Remain voters said they were voting to stop their least preferred party compared to 18% of Leave voters.

Overall, 72% said they were voting for the party they most wanted to win, including 82% of Conservatives, 74% of SNP voters, 67% of Labour voters and just over half (54%) of Lib Dems.

39% of those trying to stop their least preferred party voted Labour, 30% voted Conservative and 20% voted Lib Dem.

Where did 2017 voters go?

84% of 2017 Conservative voters stayed with the Tories, with 8% going to the Lib Dems, 5% going to Labour and 2% going to the Brexit Party. 79% of those who voted Labour in 2017 stayed with the party, while 9% went to the Conservatives, 7% to the Lib Dems, 2% to the Greens and 1% to the Brexit Party. Three quarters of 2017 UKIP voters switched to the Conservatives, with 11% going to the Brexit Party.

Best Prime Minister

49% of all voters said Boris Johnson would make the best Prime Minister, with 31% naming Jeremy Corbyn and 20% saying they didn’t know. 95% of Conservative voters named Johnson, while 76% of Labour voters named Corbyn. Lib Dem voters named Corbyn over Johnson by 26% 19%, with 55% saying they didn’t know.

The issues

Asked to choose their top three broad reasons for their decision, Conservative voters were most likely to say their party or leader “was the most likely to get the Brexit outcome I wanted” (68%), “would do a better job of running the economy” (64%), and that the leader “would make a better Prime Minister” (58%).

The top reasons Labour voters chose were that they “trusted the motives of the party I voted for more than those of other parties” (65%), that they “preferred the promises made by the party I voted for more than the promises of other parties” (59%), and that they thought Labour would do a better job of running the economy (though only 39% chose this as a reason). Only 19% of Labour voters said that believing the party would get the Brexit outcome they wanted was among their top three reasons for doing so.

For Lib Dems, the most important reason was “trusting the motives of the party” (62%), followed by getting “the Brexit outcome I wanted” and that they “preferred the promises” made by the Lib Dems (both 53%).

Asked to choose from a longer list of issues which three had been the most important in their voting decision, 72% of Conservative voters named getting Brexit done, with 41% naming the NHS, 29% naming the economy and 25% choosing having the right leadership or the best PM. For Labour voters, the NHS was by far the most important issue, named by 74%; 28% mentioned stopping Brexit or getting a second referendum, while 27% mentioned poverty and inequality. Among Lib Dems, 65% mentioned stopping Brexit or a getting second referendum, 58% mentioned the NHS and 30% mentioned climate change and the environment.

The Brexit effect

73% of those who voted Leave in the EU referendum voted Conservative, while 16% voted Labour and 4% for the Brexit Party. 92% of 2017 Conservative Leave voters stayed with the Tories. 64% of 2017 Labour Leave voters stayed with Labour, while 25% switched to the Conservatives.

Labour took 47% of the vote among those who voted Remain in the EU referendum, while the Lib Dems took 21% and the Conservatives took 20%. 66% of 2017 Conservative Remain voters stayed with the Conservatives, with 21% going to the Lib Dems and 8% to Labour. 84% of 2017 Labour Remain voters stayed with Labour, while 9% went to the Lib Dems.

One in twenty (5%) said they voted Leave in the 2016 referendum but now think we should remain; 13% said they voted Remain but the referendum result should be honoured.

Nearly three quarters (73%) of Conservative voters said they voted Leave and wanted Brexit to happen as soon as possible; a further 18% said they voted Remain but wanted the referendum result to be honoured. 61% of Labour voters and 76% of Lib Dem voters said they voted Remain and still wanted to prevent Brexit happening if at all possible.

80% of Leave voters who wanted to get on with Brexit voted Conservative, with 11% choosing Labour and 4% the Brexit Party. More than half of Leave voters who now wanted to remain voted Labour (58%), with 14% going to the Lib Dems and another 14% to the Conservatives. Remain voters who wanted the referendum result to be honoured chose the Conservatives over Labour by 62% to 23%, with 8% going to the Lib Dems. Among remainers who still wanted to prevent Brexit if at all possible, just over half (56%) voted Labour, with 26% going to the Lib Dems; 5% of them voted Conservative.

15% of voters said they would probably have voted for a different party had Brexit not been on the agenda at this election. This included 28% of those who ended up voting Lib Dem, 14% of Conservatives, and 11% of Labour voters. 2016 Leave and Remain voters were equally likely to say they would probably have voted differently had it not been for Brexit (16%).

Half of Labour voters who would have voted differently had it not been for Brexit said they would probably have voted Lib Dem; 52% of Lib Dems who would have voted differently had Brexit not been on the agenda said they would probably have voted Conservative.

]]>There’s only one way to get Brexit done and stop Jeremy Corbynhttps://lordashcroftpolls.com/2019/12/theres-only-one-way-to-get-brexit-done-and-stop-jeremy-corbyn/
Wed, 11 Dec 2019 11:19:50 +0000https://lordashcroftpolls.com/?p=16374A funny thing about elections is that people’s expectations of what the result will be can affect what the result actually is. There have been hints of this in my polling over the course of the election campaign. The survey I published yesterday found more people expecting a Conservative victory than was the case last month. At the same time, enthusiasm for switching to the Tories among some critical voters – the thing that makes such a result possible – has diminished.

There could be several reasons for this. But one might be that with Boris Johnson apparently safely on course for a majority, some may feel they don’t need to sully themselves with a Conservative vote. In focus groups over the last few weeks we have witnessed how agonising many Labour voters find the choice this year: people who want to get Brexit done and feel Jeremy Corbyn’s version of the party has ceased to represent them, but struggle with an ancestral injunction never to vote Tory. The idea that they can have the outcome they want without having to vote for it must be a tempting one to embrace: the problem is that it is an illusion, and one that represents a serious threat to the Tories’ chance of getting the majority that would drag politics from its three-year quagmire.

The new analysis from YouGov, based on over 100,000 interviews in the past week, highlights the danger. Having forecast 359 Conservative seats two weeks ago, they now project 339 – a Tory majority of 28, down from 68 in the initial estimate. The model’s margin of error means another hung parliament is well within the range of tomorrow’s possible outcomes.

If this new forecast makes Tories nervous, it at least has the effect of clarifying the choice. Naturally, there will be previous Conservative voters who are not enthusiasts for Brexit and find that Boris is not their cup of tea. The kind of people you might expect to find in, say, Putney – a seat which YouGov now predicts to fall to Labour, having projected a Conservative hold two weeks ago. Esher & Walton is now classified as a tossup between the Tories and the Lib Dems, whose leader has been increasingly clear that she will not support Johnson in a hung parliament, which leaves only one alternative. It is hard to see many people in such places enjoying what Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell have in store for them. I hope anyone considering using their ballot to make a point against the Tories will resist the temptation unless they really do relish the idea of a Corbyn government – because that is what they could get.

But perhaps the biggest threat to a Conservative majority tomorrow is not from those who oppose the party’s central policy, but from people who support it. YouGov’s seat-by-seat data reveals 48 seats in which Labour’s lead over the Conservatives is smaller than the projected vote share for the Brexit Party.

The Brexit Party’s argument has always been that they can win in places the Tories never have. This is debatable enough: the Conservatives never won in Mansfield or Stoke or Gower, until they did, and historic Tory gains are forecast in Bishop Auckland and Bolsover. But tragically, the Brexit Party threatens to prevent the Tories regaining seats they lost just two years ago, like Bedford, Lincoln, Keighley, Bury North, Vale of Clwyd and Warrington South. These are constituencies the Conservatives should be able to count on this time, but which could be kept in Labour hands by a split in the pro-Brexit vote.

So, if you’re tempted to vote for the Brexit Party, let me appeal to you. Forget the wrangling about whether there should have been a pact, and who should have stood down for whom. The decision is upon us. Whether you think it deserves any or not, the Brexit Party is projected to have no MPs. On Friday, these seats will have Conservative MPs, or Labour ones. The Tories will have a majority, or they won’t. Boris Johnson will keep Jeremy Corbyn out of Downing Street, or he won’t. And as a result, Brexit will happen, or it won’t.

This election can have one of two possible outcomes: the Conservatives and Brexit, or Labour and no Brexit. If you’d prefer the first, that’s what you should vote for.

]]>Labour support solidifies as expectations grow of a Tory win: my final General Election Dashboardhttps://lordashcroftpolls.com/2019/12/labour-support-solidifies-as-expectations-grow-of-a-tory-win-my-final-election-dashboard/
Tue, 10 Dec 2019 15:46:09 +0000https://lordashcroftpolls.com/?p=16353The final round of my general election polling dashboard, based on 4,046 interviews between 5 and 9 December, shows clear Conservative leads on most measures – but with Labour support continuing to harden at the expense of the Liberal Democrats as polling day approaches.

When we ask how likely people are to vote for each party on a 100-point scale, the Conservatives receive an average score of 36 (down slightly from its peak of 37 last week), with Labour up a notch from 28 to 30, the Lib Dems down from 15 to 14 and the Brexit Party (in non-Conservative seats) down from 9 to 8. Remain voters who backed the Tories in 2017 put their chances of voting Conservative again at an average of 63/100, up from 61 last week, while Conservative leavers put their likelihood of staying with the party at 85, up from 84 last week and 82 the week before. Labour leavers, however, put their chances of switching to the Tories at 24/100, down from 28 last week.

Overall, 2017 Conservatives put their chances of staying with the party at 79/100 (up from 77). Labour voters from 2017 put their likelihood of voting Labour again at 65 – though this is up from 61 last week, 60 the week before and 55 three weeks ago. Leave voters’ declared likelihood of voting Conservative is unchanged at 63/100. Remain voters’ likelihood of voting Labour is at 47 (up from 40 three weeks ago), while their average chance of voting Lib Dem is down to 24, from 31 at the beginning of the campaign.

Boris Johnson’s lead over Jeremy Corbyn in the best Prime Minister stakes has narrowed slightly to 15 points (43% to 28%), from 17 points last week. The proportion of Labour leavers naming Johnson is down to 31%, from 40% last week – in our first survey of the campaign, conducted between 7 and 11 November, they broke 44% to 23% in favour of Johnson.

85% of 2017 Conservatives named Johnson (up from 84% last week), including 70% of Tory Remainers. The proportion of 2017 Labour voters naming Corbyn is 59%, up from 55% last week and 53% in the first week of the campaign.

When we force people to choose between a Conservative government with Boris Johnson as PM and a Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn, we find a Tory lead of 8 points (54% to 46%), down slightly from 10 points last week. Labour leavers now break 58% to 42% in favour of Labour and Corbyn, compared to 54% to 46% in favour of Johnson and the Conservatives in the first week of the campaign. 2017 Tory remainers favour a Johnson-led Conservative government by 83% to 17%, down slightly from 86% to 14% last week.

Once again, nearly four in ten (37%) respondents said they could recall no election stories in the last few days, with a further one in five saying they had heard “lies”. The Johnson-Neil interview standoff, pledges of extra nurses, the Labour antisemitism row and claims about the NHS and trade deals were the most recalled specific stories.

Asked which would be worse for Britain – Jeremy Corbyn becoming PM, or Brexit – voters name Corbyn by 48% to 39% (compared to 49% to 39% last week). 47% of Labour leavers say Corbyn would be worse than Brexit, down from 58% in the first week of the campaign. 72% of Conservative remainers say Corbyn would be worse than Brexit, down slightly from 74% last week but up from 70% when the campaign began.

Voters think a Conservative government led by Boris Johnson would do a better job than a Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn when it came to protecting Britain’s national security (by 28 points), Britain’s standing in the world (by 18 points), getting the right outcome on Brexit (by 16 points), dealing effectively with crime (by 13 points) the economy and jobs, immigration (both by 10 points), and setting taxes at the right level (by just 2 points).

Labour under Corbyn is thought likely to do a better job on the NHS and public services (by 15 points), improving living standards for most people (by 12 points), protecting the environment (by 10 points), creating a happier society (by 8 points) and improving opportunities (by 2 points).

Labour Leave voters think the Conservatives would do better on Brexit, national security, Britain’s standing in the world and immigration – but, by wide margins, that Labour would do better in all other areas we asked about.

When we asked people how they usually reacted when they heard parties make spending promises they thought were unrealistic, the most common answer was “angry that they take voters for fools” (45%). The next most common was “nothing – it’s what politicians do” (32%, including 43% of those leaning towards the Brexit Party), while a quarter said “worried that they might get the country into more debt.”

Those leaning towards the Tories were more likely than most to worry about excessive spending and debt (35%, putting it second on their list of likely reactions), while those leaning towards Labour were more likely than most to say “pleased they are trying to provide solutions, even if I don’t believe they can be delivered” (24%).

Asked what they make of Labour claims that the Conservatives are planning to privatise the NHS as part of a trade deal with Donald Trump and the United States, just over a quarter of all voters (27%), including more than half of those leaning towards Labour and 36% of 2017 Labour leavers, say the Tories have already started privatising parts of the NHS and that this will continue if they win the election. A further 9%, including one in five of those leaning towards Labour, say the Conservatives have a secret plan to privatise the NHS that involves selling parts of it to the US if they are returned to government.

Just over one in five voters, including a quarter of those leaning towards the Conservatives, say they think the party would like to privatise the NHS but they know they could never get away with it.

Only just over a quarter (26%), including 58% of Conservative-leaners and just 13% of 2017 Labour Leave voters, say they don’t believe the Tories want to privatise the NHS.

Only 59% of respondents said they had definitely decided how to vote on Thursday. Those leaning towards the Conservatives were the most likely to have decided (78%), and Conservative leavers were more likely to be sure (81%) than Tory remainers (64%). SNP-leaning voters were the next most likely to say they had made up their minds (66%), while 65% of Labour-leaners, 50% of Lib Dem-leaners and 27% of Green-leaners said the same. 2017 Labour Remain voters were more likely to be sure (67%) than Labour leavers (59%).

Recent weeks have seen a shift towards expectations of a Conservative victory and an overall majority for Boris Johnson. The proportion expecting the Tories to be the largest party in a hung parliament is down to 30% (from 34% in mid-November), while three in ten now expect a majority Conservative government (up from 22%). 86% of those leaning towards voting Tory expect the party to come out on top, including 58% who expect an outright victory. Just under half of those leaning towards Labour (45%) and the SNP (46%), and 65% of those leaning towards the Lib Dems expect the Conservatives to be the largest party or to have a majority.

We asked people to choose from a range of words to describe how various election outcomes would make them feel. The most common choices for a Johnson/Conservative win were “relieved,” “worried,” “despairing” and “hopeful.” The most frequent reactions to a Corbyn/Labour victory were “worried,” “hopeful,” “despairing” and “scared.”

Our map of the campaign shows how different issues, attributes, personalities and opinions interact with one another. The closer the plot points are to each other the more closely related they are. This week we see how the belief that the Conservatives have begun to privatise the NHS, or have a secret plan to do so, is centred squarely in Labour/Lib Dem territory (while the idea that the party would do so if it thought it could get away with appears close to the centre of the map). We can also see how those towards the Conservative-leaning side of the map are the most likely to be worried or angered by what they regard as unrealistic spending promises, while those further over are more likely to be pleased that solutions have been offered even if they don’t believe they can be delivered. There is also a clear divide between different kinds of voters when it comes to their reaction to the idea of another hung parliament.